Maman Brigitte Service-Feb 2-Protect,Wealth,Justice,Transform

This service is for one candle, dressed and blessed, with your request for Maman Brigitte on her holy day, Imbolc, Februrary 2nd.

She walks the walk and talks the talk. Known for her obscenity spewing mouth and favouring rum laced with hot peppers, Mama Brigitte is serious business. Lwa Mama Brigitte is the Queen of the Spirit World, the wife of Baron Samedi. She is connected to the African Orisha, Oya, Queen of the Winds & Hurricanes. Her sacred animal is the rooster. I call upon Mama Brigitte to clear negativity and bring clarity to my life, and to bring protection and wisdom from ancestors and spirit guides. She is also phenomenal at helping with academics, call upon her when studying and prayer to her before exams. She will show you the way if you respect her and acknowledge her daily.

Her Christian blending is with St. Brigid, in whom the legend of the British Goddess Brigid is subsumed. She appears in Voudoun songs, and she can ride people in rites. She is a guardian of the dead, and she manifests in the cemetery to bless the graves. She leads the dead to the afterlife. Her bird representatives in the British Isles are the goose and the swan. In Haiti it is the black rooster. She has her own Veve, a symbol that acts as a gateway for the loa being invoked. The Veve is drawn in the ground in flour or salt. This practice is not known in West and Central Africa so may have origins in the sand paintings of Native Americans. This in turn may have been influenced by the Taino tribe who populated Haiti before Columbus came and spoiled the party.

Maman Brigitte is a strong presence. She drinks rum spiced with hot peppers, which sounds rather good, and she can be jolly and fun, but is plain speaking and does not suffer fools. She has a robust sexuality and dances wildly. The spiced rum would aid all these qualities!

This Haitian voudoun goddess protects the graves in cemeteries that are marked with the cross. Her masculine counterpart is one of the Ghedes in his guise of the mysterious Baron Samedi; the black clad and hatted master of the cemeteries and chief of all the ancestors. The first woman to be buried in a cemetery in Haiti will be dedicated to Maman Brigid. Maman Brigitte is a healer, like Brighid of the British Isles.

But how did she come to be in Haiti and the wider Diaspora of the African slaves? I first heard of Maman Brigitte when I visited Fellowship of Isis members in New Orleans. I was told that the introduction of poppets, now commonly called voodoo dolls, came from St Bride/ Brigid. Many Irish women were shipped to New Orleans for crimes such as prostitution (in Ireland in those days it could have been for holding hands with a boy, or becoming pregnant due to rape). These poor women were put to work along side the black women, forced into the horrific task of draining the swamps. They told their black counterparts about St Brigid, and the poppets they brought with them were the ‘Bridie dolls’ of Scottish and Irish origin.

Interestingly, when plague spread through Louisiana due to the mosquitoes in the swamps, the Irish women became nurses by necessity, and this lead to a subsequent raise in status. I always see the matron-goddess of nurses as Brigid.

There is a similar story about the introduction of Brighid to Haiti. It is little known that many thousands of Irish people were shipped to Haiti as slaves. It is cunningly referred to as ‘indentured labour’. It was slavery pure, simple and wicked. They had little or no price, unlike the African victims, and were therefore treated even worse, if that is possible. Their beloved goddess/Saint Bride went with them.